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The #guncontrol crowd’s portrait of a mass killer is all wrong

**Posted by Phineas

That’s the gist of a report from the Department of Homeland Security, working with local New Jersey police. The gun-control legislation passed in New York and introduced by Senator Feinstein in Congress, and all the demands of the gun-grabbing crowd, have nothing to do with reality:

This is what a mass killer looks like, according to a Department of Homeland Security analysis. He works alone. He uses a semi-automatic handgun. He’s a he. And he probably didn’t serve in the U.S. military.

That’s the conclusion of a November 28 analysis by the New Jersey branch of the Department of Homeland Security’s partnership with state and local law enforcement. The so-called intelligence “Fusion Center” sifted through data on 29 major mass killings in the U.S. since 1999, starting with the Littleton, Colorado school shooting. Its practical advice is to be more concerned by your co-worker with the bad hygiene who mutters about putting his “things in order” than by the war veteran in the next cubicle.

The basic pattern found by the New Jersey DHS fusion center, and obtained by Public Intelligence (.PDF), is one of a killer who lashes out at his co-workers. Thirteen out of the 29 observed cases “occurred at the workplace and were conducted by either a former employee or relative of an employee,” the November report finds. His “weapon of choice” is a semiautomatic handgun, rather than the rifles that garnered so much attention after Newtown. The infamous Columbine school slaying of 1999 is the only case in which killers worked in teams: they’re almost always solo acts — and one-off affairs. In every single one of them, the killer was male, between the age of 17 and 49.

They also don’t have military training. Veterans are justifiably angered by the Hollywood-driven meme of the unhinged vet who takes out his battlefield stress on his fellow Americans. (Thanks, Rambo.) In only four of the 29 cases did the shooter have any affiliation with the U.S. military, either active or prior at the time of the slaying, and the fusion center doesn’t mention any wartime experience of the killers. Yet the Army still feels the need to email reporters after each shooting to explain that the killer never served.

In other words, “wrong person, wrong weapon.” But that’s immaterial to the gun-control posse, since their objective is really to make it incrementally harder for law-abiding people to obtain weapons, until it reaches the point where no one will bother trying — a de facto ban. That’s why facts and truth don’t matter to them: the strategy is to go for the scariest looking weapons first and play on people’s emotions, as well as tarring (again, law-abiding) people who buy such weapons as themselves objects of fear. The goal is not public safety, but abolition.

Thankfully, this latest federal effort looks to be going nowhere, but the fact-free assault on our natural right to keep and bear arms goes on in the state capitals. We need to carry the fight and the truth there, too.

RELATED: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is rapidly becoming my new hero. Check out this video of him taking the Senate hearing on gun violence to school with facts and truth, all while being polite and respectful to the opposition. This is how you get the message across.

3 thoughts on “The #guncontrol crowd’s portrait of a mass killer is all wrong”

Used to be a joke back in the dark ages when I was growing up about losing 30 pounds of ugly fat – by cutting off one’s head. DiFi would easily qualify for losing that much ugly fat, but Nazi Pelousy wouldn’t – her head is entirely ethereal space, with no weight whatsoever, only the ugly.

It’s sad when ideology trumps both logic and fact. But, I guess that’s what progressivism is all about…

In my 26 year career in public education, it got to the point I had to “clear the decks” on the first day of school by informing the students, “I am a Vietnam veteran. I do not have drinking or drug problems, nightmares or flashbacks, and Oriental folks are safe around me. Any further questions?” Also, I have never seen crappy movies like “Taxi Driver” or “Deerslayer” that portry the drug-crazed “baby killer” syndrome. Why would I? The cost of those movie tickets is more than the cost of a good meal.